A Time of Great Darkness In A Season Of Designated Light

By Peter Marshall

December 23, 2009

We live in a time of great darkness for our nation. In Washington, the prevailing culture of our government is that it exists to provide for the people. In exercising this supposed benevolence it insists on controlling more and more of our daily lives and our finances. With a few lonely exceptions, this seems to be the prevailing attitude of most of the Congress of the United States, which clearly no longer represents the public. Over 60 percent of the American people are opposed to the looming health care bill, and when more of the details of this coming horror are revealed that percentage will rise. But that does not deter the legislative solons of the republic — they plow on enacting their socialistic agenda regardless of the people. This is, of course, being propelled by a President who is determined to foist government control on Americans. In our entire history there has never been a President whose avowed program is more destructive to everything Americans believe in, and everything our nation has stood for. Our way of life, and indeed the future of our American experiment is very much in danger. I use these words guardedly, and without exaggeration. 

Only one thing will save us: a move of the Spirit of God that will create a grass-roots revival movement to restore American values to government, anchored in a desire to return to the God-given inalienable rights on which we were founded. Anything short of a God-ordained sweeping moral and spiritual revolution from the bottom up (in other words, motivated and energized and manned by the people themselves) will not accomplish the needed change. 

Will this happen? I don’t know, but I do know that we must all pray and work for it with everything in us. Stay tuned. 

Meanwhile, what message of hope is there for us at this Christmastide? 

This: that like the timeless sea, whose washing of our shores continues with lunar regularity despite the vagaries of human behavior, the love of our heavenly Father remains constant and eternal. There is a calming and reassuring constancy of the sea that speaks to me this morning of the Father’s love — a love which is always there for us, no matter how bad things get, no matter how great the insanity of the world. 

In another time of great darkness long ago, when the boot of the hated Roman occupier lay on the throats of the Jewish people, God quietly brought the Savior into the world. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of intense darkness and the shadow of death, upon them has the light shined” (Isaiah 9:2 Amplified Bible). God did not abandon His people then, and He will not abandon them now, either. He who founded this nation for His purposes in the world will not suffer us to be left without His grace. All of the millions of prayers that interceding Americans are bringing before the Throne of Mercy will not go unheeded.